Your Journey has been long, come sit by the Fire.

All dues come calling in time, and it seems I'm up after years of avoiding them.

In a distant corner of the galaxy, long after nations, planets, and stars have fallen to dust lies a single habitable world. Vast oceans filled with gargantuan crabs, mountains dusted in fresh snow, and a single inky black structure resting in a valley. Once it was something grand, something tall that scraped the clouds, a sign of aliens who had come to strip the world of its value to be used as fuel for their homeworld. Now? It's nothing more than a corpse, barely larger than a single house; form dissolving slowly like ice cream on a hot day, the viscous fluid staining the ground purple-black and killing the life beneath it.

But far beyond sight, miles below the surface rests something else, something other. A vast eldritch beast of amethyst-hued tendrils and limbs, curled into a position of hibernation. Hundreds of massive technological cables pierce its surface, leading into its depths. Glowing sigils dance across the skin of such a creature, in a language lost to time...

But within, walking through violent veins and gold-filled arteries, was a single figure. She... They... It...? Appeared female, with purple hair that turned mint green in a gradient-like fashion. Two wildly different pairs of horns adorned with chains and silver sprouted from Its' head, twitching at the air that flowed through the inside of this great monster. The only skin of this being was the face, light gray with dark lips that were locked in an ever-manic smile. Glowing green eyes that lacked pupils and irises gazed upon the great work it had dedicated Its life to. It wore no clothes in the traditional sense, instead clad in a robe of flowing indigo slime that seemed attached to the ground- moving with each step. Perhaps the being was a part of the beast it was within?

It entered a new chamber, gaze flicking across the space. Thousands of hexagonal chambers embedded in the walls, a semi-transparent film covering what was hidden within. It moved to look at one, hand moving to press against the surface as It monitored what was within. Barely visible, something shifted, a cable connected to their belly. The being tilted Its head, releasing a giggle before the film slid away with a sickening squelch, the cable within detaching and sliding away as two arms sprouted from the creature's- purple, malformed, inhuman with luminescent runes. They reached into the depths of the pod, gently pulling free what was protected inside as the being looked upon Its accomplishment.

A larvae, a baby, a child. Skin pale as snow, chitinous plates growing across their limbs, stubby black horns sprouting between blue hair. They were silent, asleep, calm. But healthy, living, with no illness nor disease.

The creature's face twisted into something kind then, almost loving. It cooed and moved another hand to lightly brush the larvae's head, feeling the warmth, the life. Then It spoke for the first time in ages, a resonant mixing of two voices that came from the being- no, the room- no, the entire beast that held them all as it finally stirred after long centuries of inactivity.

"Ahaehaeheaha... We... Eto... Did it... Success... Extinction no more, a stable Cradle... Our species will survive with you, little zaichik. Our child and your batchmates..."

 

Archer decreed I finally respond to his ping after years. Or else.